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"Death by Degrees" - The Nina Williams Thread

Basics:
Nina is a "back sway" character, she has an evade move by moving your stick QCB. This makes the Korean backdashing a little more difficult since inputs must be precise or you risk getting backsways in and not blocking.

QCB sway doesn't allow you to block midway until it's finished, you can stepcancel it with Up and go into her SS1---which can go into rolling dash or another backsway.

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

Comments

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

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ThirteenthorderGloria? Never heard of the girl. #kappaJoined: April 2011Posts: 1,349

After only about a half-hour exposure it felt to me like Nina handled a bit slower than T6, and had somewhat stricter input limits on some combos, specifically her chain throws (which I liked!). Is this my imagination? Is there anything I can do to contribute to the communal knowledge of our heartless blonde assassin bombshell?

I have not gotten around to her yet but I heard that Nina was supposed to be really good in this particular game, much like she was back in the days of DR/T5.
I better get to work to make some contributions...!

She is pretty damn good, I just need to unlock the skills to use her lol

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

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ThirteenthorderGloria? Never heard of the girl. #kappaJoined: April 2011Posts: 1,349

Hey fellow Nina players. I am having issues with Nina's poison. I have turned on the input display and see that I am inputting the correct commands. But it seems I only have about a 25% chance of the move actually coming out. Is there any input tricks to getting this move to more reliably come out? Because ive spent hours in training mode trying to figure out ways to make it more reliable and I can't figure it out.

Hey fellow Nina players. I am having issues with Nina's poison. I have turned on the input display and see that I am inputting the correct commands. But it seems I only have about a 25% chance of the move actually coming out. Is there any input tricks to getting this move to more reliably come out? Because ive spent hours in training mode trying to figure out ways to make it more reliable and I can't figure it out.

Let her do the rolling dash and then db+2+3. It's not a fast canceling move.

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

Brand new to Tekken in 3D fighters, and Nina seems to resonate with me best. Tips for noobs trying to improve with her?

Also, can you combo out of 1,2,1,2 other than f1+2 [W!]? Probably a stupid question, but it's just an easy combo and a nice link from a poke.

No, the only thing after 1,2,1,2 are very few things I believe. Best is the wall splat or wall break. Her pokes in here are pretty awesome.
My first Tekken being taken serious as well, so I'm trying to absorb everything I can with her.
Practice combos off her df+2 and ss+2 launchers. Big damage. I've been working on ducking a lot more highs and just doing ws2 so I can launch and do some more damage too and getting into the habit of utilizing d,DF+4, db+3 to poke more.

I wasted my first two weeks just trying to properly do her ws+1 combos. I've succeeded in doing like 4-5 in a row maybe three times out of thousands of attempts so far. lol

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

ss1 can be canceled into back for forward sway you can back sway from ss1 and quickly cancel that by pressing up to go into another ss1

and certain strings like uf+ 4,3 and
b+2, 2 can be cancelled into sidestep

I'm having trouble with the ws1 combos also lmfao i try to go by the visual ques right as she put her arm back
i love practicing it. its the most troubling thing i experienced in a fighting game. hard to do consistently

thank you for finding those matches! i was in training mode with nina and lars for hours the other day so i need to see a pro use them the right way lol

I have been playing Nina since Tekken 6, and she has not changed a lot in Tekken Tag 2. Nina is still an amazing character with a lot of strengths and very few weaknesses.

I will start with the weaknesses:
- She doesn't have the greatest range in the game, so she is most dagerous up close. Players with good back dashing give her problems. However, this weakness has been partially addressed by giving her f+2 as a fast safe high poke and by making her homing move d/b+2, which has great range, safe on block. Also ivory cutter has great range and is a good mid poke. Finally her new ff+2 has huge range and take a good chunk of damage, but it is very linear.
- Her block punishment is nothing special, but gets the job done.

Strengths:
- Great poking game
- Great juggles and overall damage
- Good throw game
- Great oki

For mid pokes, these are her main mid pokes that you want to use:
df+1,2: m,h, i13, +2 on hit, -3 on block and does 30 points of damage. This is Nina's main poke and most used move.
df+4: m, i12, +7 on hit, -4 on block and does 20 damage. Good range and good to create distance.
1+4: m,m, i15, +3 leaving the opponent crouching on hit, -6 on block, 32 damage. It is also her main bound starter and has great range.
ws+1: m, i13, great range and safe on block

High pokes:
1,2 is always great at i10
f+2: i13 with great range and leaves Nina at +8 on hit and only -3 on block.
4: i11, great range, safe and she can juggle from it on CH.
b+2,2: i12, -4 on block, +2 on hit and does 34 damage.

Low pokes:
d+4: i12, -2 on hit, -13 on block, low damage, but crushes high moves. On CH d+4,1 is guaranteed, but don't abuse it since on normal hit the 1 can be ducked and punished.
d+3: i16, -3, -16 on block, does more damage than d+4 and also high crushes. She has high, mid and low follow ups to the move, but all of them are risky.
db+3: i20, 21 damage, +3 on hit, -13 on block, and knocks down on CH. This is one of the best low pokes in the game. It also forces the enemy to crouch on normal hit. Only downside is that it doesn't high crush.
d+2: i20, 20 damage, -6 on hit, -12 on block and high crushes. It has great range, but the frames are not great on hit.

For beginners, here are a few simple solo juggles that you can use before you go into her more advanced stuff, and believe me her advanced stuff is extremely hard to pull off, but also extremely rewarding:

for launchers like df+2, b+1+4, db+3+4 and qcb+4, do this:
launcher, df+1, df+3,2, f+4,3,3 B! d+2,3 - you need to dash a bit for d+2,3

For ss+2 or when you launch them off axis:
launcher, df+3,2, f+2,1,1+2 B! d+2,3

For uf+1:
uf+1, ws+1, df+1, df+3,2, 1+4 B! d+2,3 - you will need to dash a bit for 1+4

Great information. I've been grinding hard. Trying my best not to gravitate away to less complex characters.

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

Ok now lets talk launchers. While she has nothing insane like EWGF, her launchers are great.

df+2: Nina's fastest launcher at i15. It is mid, safe, and can go under jabs. The drawback is that that it does not launch crouching opponents unless on CH just like the rest of generic df+2s that a few characters have in tekken. It is still a great move since mid launchers that are safe aren't very common in tekken, especially at this speed. It doesn't have the greatest range, but it's good enough.

b+1+4: her 2nd fastest standing launcher at i16. It's m,m, has great range and launches both standing and couching opponents. However, it is launch punishable on block. The main use of this launcher is as a whiff punisher and against moves that are -16 on block. You can't just throw it out there.

db+3+4: geyser cannon, qcb+k in SFxT. It is mid and has huuuuge range. It is a bit slow at i19 and is also launch punishable on block. Its main use is for launching bigs whiff for crazy juggle damage.

uf+1: Nina's main low crushing juggle starter. It is completely safe on block and also launches crouching opponents unlike df+2. However, it is quite slow. Still a great juggle starter.

ss+2: mid launcher from ss. It comes at i14 from side step and is great to punish the opponent when you side step a move successfully. This move made me love Nina. You side step a move then BAM launch! Sadly it got nerfed a bit in TTT2 compared to T6 as it used to be -12 on block, but now -14. Learn how to use this move properly. It's amazing.

Now for her block standing punishers:
-10: 1,2 for 22 damage and +frames on hit or 1,4 for 29 damage and -6 on hit.
-11: 4 for 20 damage and +8 frames on hit or any of the above options.
-12: b+2,2 for 34 damage and +2 frames
-13: same as the above or df+1,2 for 30 damage and +2 frames, but it has followups if you want to go for mix ups. I'd say stick with b+2,2
-14: she has tons of options here, but the best two are: df+3,4 for 45 damage and +7 frames or f+3 for 39 damage and KND/wall splat
-15: df+2 launcher or if it doesn't reach, ff+2,ff+3 for 54 damage
-16: b+1+4 launcher
-19: db+3+4

For couching/while rising punishers against low moves:
-10: d+1 very low damage, but it's not the majority of the cast has anothing else
-11: ws+4 for 20 damage and +7 frames
-12: the same as above
-13: ws+1,1+2 for 43 damage and KND/wall splat
-14: the same as above
-15: ws+2 mid launcher

For whiff punishment, your usual options are df+2, b+1+4 or db+3+4. From side step, ss+2 is great. In order to get results with Nina you have to be great in whiff punishment and movement since she does very high damage from her launchers.

I only learned about frames and such last year and it really helped me understand how things work in tekken.

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

Some tips for WS1
Okay so this seems to be a problem with many Nina players. The problem is usually in the concept instead of the actual execution. The concept behind an individual iWS1 is canceling her QCF into a WS move by pressing u/f and a button. It can be done with any of her WS moves. Some examples being:
-WS1 = QCF~u/f+1
-WS4 = QCF~u/f+4

Anyway, the QCF is not bufferable at all. SO if you start your next QCF before the prior move is finished you will get u/f+<button> (ie u/f+1 in most cases) because there is no crouch dash happening to cancel. With that being said the execution of each iWS1 has to be done VERY quickly but COMPLETELY SEPERATE from the prior WS1
So in the video you can see that the actual execution of each WS1 can be pretty sloppy and doesn't have to be a perfect QCF~u/f+1 (2369LP and it could even be something along the lines of 236989 or 2368 or 269 or 23696)

Additional notes:
-Make sure you SSR or are off axis right (in the video I did the SSR before I launched and it's perfectly acceptable just so long as you are off axis right when trying to connect multiple WS1)
-Ensure you input the WS1 VERY quickly
-Ensure you wait until Nina is FULLY RECOVERED to start the next one (if you are having trouble you can use hit analysis. When she changes back to neutral color is when you can start the next WS1)
-If you have a programmable stick you can do d,f,u/f+1 to get it come come out 1 frame faster and even by hand you can do d~f~u/f+1 to get it to come out. Like I said the execution doesn't have to be perfect but the PERFECT WS1 is d~f~u/f+1

What other rules are there for landing it and not whiffing? Right axis?

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

I know that Nina is an offense oriented character, but I wondering I her offense is based more of frame-traps and pressure or on mid/low mix-ups? Also would you say she has good movement at all?

Thanks in advance!

I'm gonna kinda tie both of those into the same answer.
Nina is a very poke based character. Her lows are somewhat on the slower side being i20 and she really doesn't have too many frame traps outside of using SS1 relentlessly. A few things that Nina has that aren't the ideal frame trap (forcing the opponent into a disadvantage and baiting attacks with it. For example putting them at -2 and constantly following up with a 15 frame attack to bait something i13 just so you can land a CH 4) Her traps come more from putting yourself at -2 to -4 and using her SS (which is VERY good) to avoid pokes. Once they catch on the will have to use slower tracking moves to prevent you from SSing.

Nina's best poking tools are:
1 its i10 and leaves you at +1 on block
1,2 its i10 and leaves you at -1 on block
4 its i11 and yeilds a juggle on CH this is your you got baited move. When yomi it up and read them M4 to the face.
d/f+1,2 its i13 and -3 on block
f+2 its i13 -4 on block and +8 on hit
d/f+4 its i12 -4 on block and +7 on hit

Lows
d+2 its i20 and it high crushes
d/b+3 its i20 and +4 on hit

The concept behind poking with her is get them use to blocking your barrage of pokes by doing poke poke or poke SS. Once you have them pissed enough to just stand there and block like a douch you start blasting their ankles with d/b+3.

Advanced SSing is done by doing an empty SS and waiting to see the opponent's reaction:
- If they stand there like a douch when you SS you can go back to your pokes, hit em with d/b+3 OR you can apply pressure with SS1~b or SS1~f which is roughly +7 . Meaning if you do either of those and cancel into WS1 or WS4 (both interruptable on block or hit and both combo from SS1 on a side hit) from SS1~b or even QCF moves from SS1~f (SS1~F+2 is a safe wall splat and SS1~F+4 HC 2 are both interruptable on block or hit from SS1)

- If they attack and whiff just press 2 for a SS2 and pretty big damage.

Playing Nina is a lot like playing a game of speed chess when you're on the offense and sacraficing the army so you can bait a check mate.

ADDITIONALLY SS1 to the side or back gives a free SS1~F+1 if it hits to the back you get your typical staple and if it hits to the side you get a gimp combo but it's still going to hurt.

What other rules are there for landing it and not whiffing? Right axis?

Yep just off axis right, quick individual input, making sure each one is looked at as its own individual move AND for the purpose of a match you can only land 7 hits prior to the bound (d/f+2 SSR iWS1x7 1+4 B! OR CH d/b+2 d/f+1 d/f+3,2 iWS1x4)

In a prior post I had seen someone mention back dashing with Nina is more difficult do to the fact that she has a sway. A good way to prevent an inadvertant sway is to back dash in a manner that doesn't require you to go back to neutral between the back and the d/b by rolling from the back to the d/b.
Input method used should be: b,B~d/b~n >>> B~d/b~n >>> B~d/b~n >>> B~d/b~n
Non verbal hands tutorial by Rain-

Hayashida step:
Hayashida step is linking Nina sway in a manner that will quickly SS and avoid a ton of high and linear attack. It's done by canceling the QCB with ~u and rolling straight into another QCB.
Notation is: QCB~u QCB~u QCB~u QCB~u.

You can also do it without the SS and just move backwards with it, but it's not as viable and much more difficult to use.
Notation is: QCB~u/b~n QCB~u/b~n QCB~u/b~n.

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." ~ Bruce Lee

Okay, I have a bit more time to post now. The way I'll lay this out is I'll post how many hits prior the ~5 and I'll post what's ideal, but not limited to, for Nina to use. THEN below it I'll list an example.
Nina's TA for:

These are just rough examples and I'm sure most characters get similar things after her TA but it works really well with running moves.

As for the wall Nina gets very similar things and it's dependent on wall hits prior to the ~5 BUT in most cases Nina will use
SS1~d/f+3,2,3 or 4,3,d+4,3 as her TA at the wall. There are times when she can get SSR1~b~u~f+4,3,3 and other random things but I wouldn't really mess too much with anything outside of 4,3,d+4,3 or SS1~b~u~d/f+3,2,3.